


The Infinite Lovers' Playlist

by Goldmonger



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: (travis pls), Canon Compliant, Crushes, Dysfunctional Family, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Possibly Unrequited Love, Pre-Relationship, Team as Family, the road to traveller con!, with some fjorclay and widofjord propaganda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:08:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24746587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goldmonger/pseuds/Goldmonger
Summary: Also known as: ‘Pining and Miscommunication: The Mighty Nein Story’. Beau likes Jester, Yasha likes Beau, Caleb likes Jester, Jester likes Fjord, Veth likes Caleb, Caduceus likes Fjord, and Fjord likes Caleb.“When you guys first came in, we were as wholesome as the family in the Brady Bunch. Now we're as dysfunctional and incestuous as the cast of the Brady Bunch.” – The TV show 'Community', also Critical Role Campaign 2 after episode 85...*[Anyway. Here are seven songs to play when you’ve got it bad for one of your best friends.]
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, Caduceus Clay/Fjord, Fjord/Caleb Widogast, Fjord/Jester Lavorre, Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett, Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast, Veth Brenatto/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 18
Kudos: 60





	1. Deep Water

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song by [American Authors](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-44kcsC_hw)

_Ain't even scratched the surface  
Thinking I deserve the dream but I don't deserve the hurting  
I want the flame without the burning  
But I can't find my purpose when I don't know what my worth is_

_I was going for the title, got hit by your tidal wave, uh  
Can't stay in the shallows, please tell me I won't wash away_

They’re cruising easily at twenty-three knots an hour, both war and the dragon-turtle relegated to naught but turbulent memory, for Fjord as well as the remaining crew. The afternoon blows past them in a warm, aromatic breeze, carrying much of the distress of the past week with it. It’s easy to drift away on the sea, Fjord knows, whether you intend it or not. Something about the broad expanse of unending and unfathomable depths unmoors you from petty problems. It’s what has drawn him back to it, again and again: that need to be unshackled, and listless. Even the great serpent can’t take that from him.

“What are you thinking about, Captain Tusktooth?”

He opens his eyes and smiles down at Jester, who has sauntered up to the gunwale to lean out with him. Looming over the edge of any ship like this is instinctual, with the waves beneath all broiled into foam, your palms damp and crusting with salt from the endlessly spraying water. He’s seen the whole crew in similar images of ecstasy, billowing in the rigging or poking out of the crow’s nest with their arms extended, like they can snag them in the sky. They’re all toying with a force that nurtures leviathans and subdues nations. Of course it’s intoxicating.

“The ocean,” he replies, running his fingers through his hair, through the snaking wet curls at the nape of his neck. “While we have some peace.”

There’s an uncharacteristic silence, and he finds Jester watching him, her lips quirked in a sad, contemplative smile. “Would you… would you prefer to be a sailor again? Now that you’re free? Veth is already thinking about her life back on the Menagerie Coast, and Caduceus has his family too, far, far away. They both… you know, they might move on now that the war’s over. Are you thinking about doing that as well?”

He doesn’t want to seem simple by stuttering out excuses, so he waits, taps his foot against the slick deck, woodgrain that has been embellished with his blood in several places. This ship that has absorbed a part of him.

“Jester, I don’t know how to answer that. Nobody’s leaving right now, though.”

“Right now,” she whinges, and tilts her head against his shoulder, in by his collarbone so that it’s natural for him to sweep his arm up and around her, the both of them facing the horizon. “But what about when we get back from Traveller Con, and we have nothing left to fight? Even Essek is running away from us!”

“From his war crimes,” he amends, shrugging at her reproving frown. “It’s true. And we still have that big chained god to think about. I’m sure Veth and Deucey will want to stick around to help us deal with his toothy minions, or whatever the hell else he has following him.”

“Oh, Fjord.” Jester pulls back and takes his hands in hers. They’re weirdly soft, he thinks, even wrinkled from all the moisture. “You promise you’ll keep us together?”

She’s beatific, all apple-cheeked and earnest with her batting eyelashes making tornadoes across the world, and he’s nodding automatically before he fully realises. How he’s supposed to keep their ragtag bunch of misfits in line without the sea and the title it temporarily grants him is a mystery, but he resolves to try. He knows these people, after all, knows he’s at his best when he has them at his back. He also knows he likes it much better when Jester’s grinning. She carries so much light with her that she may as well be glowing, and he couldn’t bear it if he was the one to snuff that out.

He can be a leader. Maybe it’ll be enough to keep them as a unit, and maybe their being a unit will be enough to handle the next challenge, and the one after that.

Jester jumps into his arms as he sighs, and he transforms it into an unconvincing cough. She’s giggling, so luckily it probably doesn’t matter.

“I – eh. I don’t mean to interrupt.”

Jester slides out of his embrace, slightly indigo in the face, and they both swivel to find Caleb toting Frumpkin on one arm. The monkey is squawking curiously, and Caleb is a rosy shade of pink.

“What’s up, Caleb?”

“I wanted to – I was, well, going to ask you about using Frumpkin to help some of the deckhands with the sails,” he says, flushing darker still. “Because our numbers were so depleted. But – I can come back –,”

Fjord doesn’t want him to burst a capillary, so he shrugs. “No need. Jester was just –,”

“I’m helping Gallen repair the breaches to the bottom,” she says, and winks, to his chagrin, “so I have stuff to do anyway. Carpentry stuff.” She beams, and releases his hand to prance over to one of the hatches, gracefully dodging the ambling crewmates as she goes. He’s surprised by how much he barely registers Jester’s feather-light touch these days, yet he still misses it when it’s gone. It seems he’s usually letting her nudge into his space or drape herself over him. It’s like white noise, as exasperating and comforting as Caduceus’s furry lichen, which will spontaneously creep up scrapes on his elbow or knee when they’re all at rest.

“Apologies,” murmurs Caleb, looking at his feet. He’s scratching behind Frumpkin’s tiny ear almost compulsively, while the fey squints at Fjord in a manner he would call accusatory if he didn’t know better.

“For what, you ridiculous wizard?” He claps Caleb on the back and starts walking, choosing his steps carefully as he directs them towards his cabin. His blood is here, there, everywhere.

“I didn’t mean to intrude.”

Fjord laughs. “You probably saved me, actually. I was about a minute away from getting another Traveller Con flyer nailed to my forehead.”

Caleb smiles, hesitant. “She is persistent. And the hour grows closer for that particular event.”

“Gods help us. She’ll be hugging me again in about twenty minutes, so I’ll ask about our status as high priests then.”

He expects an exaggerated groan, an empathetic lament for their roles in this upcoming and long-awaited cult meeting, but when he checks for it, Caleb is sullen. It’s not how things normally go between them. They banter and chat business, then maybe buried trauma if the wine’s been flowing and the others are asleep. Caleb’s easy to talk to, if you know how he works.

Normally.

“Um. Something I said?”

Caleb shakes his head, his lips pursed. His hair is ignited to flame in the sunlight, strands of it borne on the wind and framing his features into a cast that’s less angular. He’s even inched out of the phase of exposure to the sun that turns his skin lobster-red, the faintest tan settling across his nose and hollow cheeks. He looks good, Fjord thinks, and is suddenly embarrassed by his scrutiny. Caleb, thankfully, seems too pensive to have caught him at it.

“Just reflecting on the past weeks,” he mutters. “I am… wrapped up in many things.”

“I get that,” says Fjord gloomily, as they ascend to the quarter deck, saluting Orly. He rumbles a respectful “Cap’n,” as they pass him, going through the creaking doors and into the great cabin.

“There’s a lot happening at the moment,” he allows, stripping off his jacket and tossing it onto the neatly made cot. They only use this cabin for private discussions now, Fjord having moved to the orlop to sleep at night, squashed under the dome with the others in their party. He wonders, sometimes, that he doesn’t miss the solitude.

“Yet we are managing,” says Caleb, tracking his movements as he unclips his vambraces. “You should keep those on. Previous experiences have proven that we could be assailed at any moment.”

“I just need a breather,” grunts Fjord, slumping on the cot. “It’s tough, having to be the guy that’s always _on_ , you know? I’ve wanted to be a captain my whole life, practically, but – honestly, I kind of miss being a good-for-nothing adventurer.”

“Hmm. Good for some things,” says Caleb, softening out of his mysterious earlier disapprobation. “Regardless. I don’t want you to get hurt just because your armour chafes.”

Fjord’s stomach swoops, and he has to concentrate on maintaining a façade of nonchalance. Which, he understands suddenly, is exactly that – a façade. “I think I’m safe for now. You’re the one we have to be worried about.”

Caleb raises an enquiring eyebrow, so he points to the knob of amber dangling over his heart.

“You mean Uk’otoa?”

“Uk’otoa,” he echoes grimly. “He’s the clingy sort, you know. And if anything happens to that anti-scrying amulet you have, his eye will turn on you.”

“Then we will make sure nothing happens to it,” says Caleb, coming to sit on the bed beside him. Frumpkin clambers from his arm to Fjord’s shoulder, having gotten very used to scaling his form since Caleb delegated him as a de facto guardian. It was a sweet gesture, Fjord thinks, especially since Frumpkin-the-cat is about as welcome with him as a mouthful of pollen. He really is a machine made to sneeze.

“We’ll protect you,” says Fjord, and knows he means it vehemently, whether Caleb needs them or not. He has the advantage of intensive arcane knowledge, after all. His power has never been in question. Fjord cannot say the same.

(Avantika lurks in his dreams as much as the great serpent, with caresses that twist into vices. He takes turns drowning and choking, and hears his own spine snap and resound while she remains upright, and gleeful. In every instance his magic is siphoned along with the air. His friends, then, fall like rain into an unstoppable flood.)

Frumpkin’s tail has curled loosely around his neck, and he thinks he must look like a pirate again. He must look like something _she_ would appreciate. Something she would want.

Caleb is shaking him slightly, a tinge of concern in his voice. His name. “Fjord?”

He blinks back into the present, to the rocking of the ship and Caleb’s hand on his forearm, as steady and stubborn as an anchor. He’s oddly cold, and his body is sore; he feels as though he’s been pulverised and left alone to stew in his injuries for days. That on its own fills him with dread. He knows that he’s letting himself get lost too much in past mistakes, succumbing to the fallout of an oath he swore when the only alternative was a long death. His old patron knows his terror like he knows his desire, and though he may not have as much influence over his mind, his nightmares don’t know that yet. He senses the serpent writhing at the back of his skull, the same as the figure with a halo of fire and hands that coaxed, that welcomed, that promised.

He seeks a garden, and is submerged. He cannot scream, merely empty his lungs so as to make room for the water.

Caleb pats him, and he acknowledges that there is an anchor; there is something keeping him from the storm.

“Did I tune out again?” he asks, chuckling, hoping it comes across as sincere. “My bad. You were asking about – Frumpkin working on the – the rigging, right? That’s a great idea. You think he’ll be okay up there?”

Caleb is close enough now that he doesn’t have to guess at his climbing apprehension. “ _Ja_. Yes, I was. And he will. But are you certain –,”

“Absolutely,” he replies, standing, black spots bursting like a necromantic curse in his peripheral vision as Frumpkin skitters off him. His heart gallops. He can feel shame cramping his innards, and a swell of anger that he allowed himself to shirk his duty. He has to be on guard at all times, for pirates or the Cerberus Assembly or a lying drow or deep-sea monsters or anything else that can hurt them. While he is captain, he has to be able to keep his friends safe. Dragging Caleb further into a mess that could get him killed is a horrific breach of his responsibilities.

He dons his jacket, Caleb reaching towards him as though he can stall his progress, but his skinny fist closes on air and falls back to the bed. Fjord stows his regret with his humiliation and fear, hating that he knows he would find it hard to touch even Jester if she were here, and seeking to reassure him too.

He has a duty, before everything, and that’s to protect them. All of them. He leaves Caleb behind, when he opens the door to the quarter-deck. It’s for the best.

(It doesn’t feel that way.)


	2. She

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from the song by [Dodie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEdZFhCEjWI)

_And I'll be okay  
Admiring from afar  
'Cause even when she's next to me  
We could not be more far apart  
And she tastes like birthday cake and story time and fall  
But to her  
I taste of nothing at all_

Their quest is over, or so Veth proclaims as they prepare to hop off the _Ball-Eater_ and onto the dock in Nicodranas. They saved a continent, thousands of potential refugees, and Fjord to boot, all in one fortnight-long boat ride. She announces, to a number of exhausted cheers, that their entire crew deserves a vacation. They deserve time to themselves.

Beau tacitly agrees in mumbled syllables, much like the rest of the Nein, because the last thing she wants to do is start an argument over semantics. She restrains herself, astonishingly, from snapping that the very fact that they’re all still alive and not incarcerated means that they should be spending the next few days or weeks or months – ideally longer – making plans. Organising, strategising, plotting, especially where Essek, Ikithon, and Tharizdun are concerned. Separate but suspect entities, enemies until proven otherwise. Every member of their party is going to be crucial in carrying out investigations into all three. You don’t tear down a wall just because one wolf has been hunted down and killed, no, you shore up your defences for something worse. You learn from experience.

Or, she reflects, as her friends start to disembark, you scatter into the wind, like something brittle and hastily made. Like you were created to break apart.

Individual voices disperse into the chatter of a mixed crowd, the familiar deckhands melting into the tide of dockworkers as they shift cargo and start much needed repairs. Orly stays on the bow of the ship in conversation with Fjord, while Caleb disappears into the hold trailing a nattering Veth, and Caduceus initiates an inspection of a crate of moulding turnips. Beau casts around for a flare of blue, and instead discovers Yasha, sitting at the edge of the pier, sharpening her sword with a whetstone and earning a wide berth from the workers and sailors. She smirks, and goes to join her.

“That Magician’s Judge?”

Yasha peers up at her, narrowing her eyes against the sunlight. Despite weeks on the bared deck of a ship in the Lucidian Ocean, she remains pale as death. “Yes,” she says politely, and returns to her precise task.

“It’s a great weapon,” intones Beau, crouching, then plopping on her butt next to her. She wants to dangle her feet in the crystalline water, but feels as though wrestling off her thigh-high boots would be more of a chore than the momentary relief warranted. They have baths to look forward to at the Lavish Chateau, she reasons. That will have to do.

“I wish to cut wizards in half with it,” says Yasha, measured as ever, though her jaw tenses. She angles the sword downward, where it glints ominously in the noonday glare. The steel is dark, and intricate with runic spells designed to hobble the occult. It’s nine kinds of badass.

“Hells yeah. I got quite a few on my list too. I’m looking forward to a more intimate fight though.” She holds up her fists, clenches them so that her knucklebones stand out. She can picture Obann’s smug face, Ikithon’s, even the Traveller’s. Smarmy, entitled, sneaky in a way that’s not cute or endearing but devious, and setting off a thousand alarm klaxons that only she can hear with startling and deadly clarity.

“I do not long for battle,” says Yasha quietly. “But I will not refuse it when it arrives.”

In silent solidarity they gaze out over the azure spread of the glittering sea, the lurid colour almost dreamlike. It’s a harsher sight here, Beau thinks, than when they had first come to the coast, when they languished under a sultry, dusky sky. Everything had been warm – the sand, the water, and the hand that squeezed hers as they drew nearer a forbidden home.

She glances surreptitiously at Yasha, all carven lines in black and white, or so it would seem unless you got closer – closer than most have ever been. Near, like this, the effect is not so severe. Her hair fades to the grey of a person that’s lived a lifetime; her eyes glaze over in unknown company, and she will sometimes hold a hand over her sternum, between her ribs, like her heart is in danger of slipping down unless she hoists it in place. All of them give off varying auras of melancholy, but Yasha’s isn’t just potent, it’s massive. It’s dark enough to be mistaken for rage, in some circumstances, if you’re not paying attention. So many see an impenetrable glacier yet somehow miss the bulk of her, the stoic frailty that’s hidden under the surface. Beau likes to think she’s one of the few that can approach her like this, so casual, a reliable comrade-in-arms. She has always been in awe of strength, and it blooms into adulation when it comes with companionship. This is no different.

Yasha chooses this moment to smile at her, lowering her sword between her legs so she can lean briefly, comfortably, into Beau.

“Us against the world, I suppose? Just a pair of – of silly fighters. Fighting everyone.”

“Always,” she responds, caught off guard by the musculature she can feel against hers, and how her dark hair tickles her neck, all tossed by the unwieldy coastal weather –

“Beau?”

She jolts, as though she’s been caught with her pants around her ankles, and leaps up in a single fluid motion. Jester is skipping towards them, her tail waving behind her like a pennant.

“Beau! I thought that was you! And Yasha too!”

“Hello, Jester,” says Yasha warmly, rising slower, more deliberately. “Are you set to visit your mother again?”

Jester skids to halt in front of them, winding a lock of hair around her forefinger. “Of course I am! I’m always happy to see Mama. But there’s so much to do first. So many things to plan for – I mean Traveller Con is in less than a week!”

Beau instinctively wants to scowl, but she schools her expression into one of pleasant anticipation. She’s not used to pretending around Jester, pulling on a mask she thought she had discarded sometime around Hupperdook. Or Shady Creek Run, maybe, when reality smacked her in the face, and trying to seem like a hard-ass all the time became a childish fantasy. She’s afraid of sinking back into the fear that had made her so reluctant to be herself.

Yasha is nodding with clear interest. “We’ll have to start preparing soon,” she grants, and Jester bounces on the spot, delighted.

“I can’t wait, oh my god. The costumes alone!”

“Great,” says Beau, though it emerges in such a low register that neither of the other two seems to have realised it was supposed to contribute anything.

“We’ll be busy! But first, I have a job to do.”

Beau’s ears all but perk up. “A job? What job? Where are you going? Is it – him?”

Jester frowns in confusion, and she mentally kicks herself. She’s about as subtle as a smack of her bo staff straight to the temple.

“Is it who?”

“Nothing.” They’re by the beach, their friends are safe, and she’s not swallowed by a kraken-god. She doesn’t have to turn up the dial on the asshole meter quite so far, nor become some kind of overprotective psycho. No matter how appealing it sounds. “Sorry. What’s the job?”

Jester flickers back into excitement with an abruptness that’s almost frightening, and Beau wishes abstractly that she had an ounce of such self-control.

“It’s very special, very tricksy job,” she whispers, and grabs her hand. Beau hopes she doesn’t mind that it’s clammy as a fish right now. “Yasha, is it okay if we see you in a little bit? I need Beau so we can be really stealthy doing the job.”

Yasha smiles in understanding, and shakes her head. “Not at all. You guys have fun. I should help the crew unload, anyway.”

She sees them off with good cheer, so Beau doesn’t feel like a total jerk, but it still stings, somehow – looking back only to see that Yasha has already turned away, her rippling shoulders like alabaster, like marble, like an immovable monument.

“You see that guy?”

She hurtles back to Jester, specifically Jester’s fingers intertwining with hers idly, like it’s what she meant to do in the first place. Beau starts to sweat, and it has little to do with the heat.

Yasha is back there – but Jester, Jester is here, she’s always been here – and –

She tries to focus. Jester, a vision in periwinkle, has tugged her behind a pallet of cargo, and is pointing at the dockmaster. She’s talking, inexplicably, about his stupidly large hat.

“So you distract him, and I’ll levitate it over him, okay? He won’t be able to get it!” She giggles. “The Traveller will love this, you know – it’s not bad, just tricksy, and funny! Not as funny as painting a dick on him, really, but Caleb said that was getting sort of mean, so I’m going to mix it up a bit!”

Beau agrees, still reeling. She’s not completely useless, though; she still has the urge to enquire further about the Traveller, wants to extract his weaknesses from Jester – his pressure point – but she can’t do that to her, won’t use her monastic gifts to abuse the trust that her friend has so often placed in her. She remembers being held tightly, securely, while her father’s footsteps echoed in the distance, remembers the scent of syrup and ginger filling her nose, a lilting voice soothing her wounds like a salve. Being in such constant proximity to Jester has made her more vulnerable, but it doesn’t mean she can slack on looking out for her. That’s a post she’ll never desert, even if she’s bowed and broken.

Beau coughs, awkwardly, and tries to manifest interest in the proceedings. “That’s, well, that’s a cool idea. No more… no more dicks, then?”

She hears a million imaginary groans, and thanks Ioun that Fjord is nowhere near them.

“Don’t be silly,” chuckles Jester. “I’ll always draw dicks. They’re like, my gimmick.”

“I guess they are,” Beau says, a little flushed. Jester does make a point of putting dicks absolutely everywhere, fixating on anything phallic like it’s the highest form of entertainment. Maybe, just maybe, it’s an ironic fascination. Or maybe, Beau hates the Traveller just a teensy bit more.

“I do other stuff too, though,” Jester considers, elbowing Beau conspiratorially. “I’m creative, obviously.”

Beau’s skin tingles where Jester’s elbow made contact. She’s being watched by a pair of tourmaline-pink eyes, which crease, and twinkle like the easternmost stars in the sky. She doesn’t feel the shove until she’s suddenly staggering, out from behind their stack of crates.

She lands like a cat, because her reflexes work better than her brain, and turns to find Jester, wiggling emerald-green magic across the docks. She shoos her impatiently. “The job!” she hisses.

Beau fulfils her role, dazed and oddly, weirdly buoyant.


	3. Hello My Old Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from the song by [The Oh Hellos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AObC5VKMdEc)

_Hello, my old heart  
How have you been?  
How is it being locked away?  
Don't you worry, in there, you're safe_

The city of Nicodranas is bustling when they finally depart the docks for the promenade, the _Ball-Eater_ optimistically berthed and their accounts settled with Orly. Their crew had long since disappeared off to see their families or paid companionship, most of them still a little knock-kneed from the tense peace talks, the midnight attack on their captain, and the dragon-turtle encounter. Caleb thinks their sentiment is well-founded, and so does Jester, which is why they’re off to check in with Marion and the Brenattos before making a concrete decision about their future.

Nobody has said as much, of course. They’re all hyper-aware of the fateful date of Jester’s rally, or cult meeting, or congregation, and the entire party is simultaneously experiencing the same wash of wonder and dread at the prospect. Caleb tentatively includes himself in that category, although it seems terribly unfair to be suspicious when Jester is so entirely enamoured by the idea. He looks up and locates her alongside Fjord, bounding between milling people with her skirts ruffling in the breeze. He quickly averts his gaze.

They follow the sandy cobblestones into the main street, a packed-earth boulevard bordered by coral townhouses with brightly-painted roofs, windows dripping with a hundred species of flower and fern. The sky blazes blue overhead, and the noise of the crashing ocean is drowned out by the cacophony of shouts and titters, salesmen and traders bawling about everything from exotic pets to resin jewellery to imported Tal’Dorei fruits. Caleb permits himself to sink into the now-familiar atmosphere for a moment, basking in the fragrant air, the sitar music twanging from somewhere down their route, and the anonymity of a crowd. It’s a mite jarring, how easily he fell in love with this place. He would never have expected to adopt somewhere so aggressively _western_ as a home away from home. Not that he could really claim anywhere permanent as the latter, he thinks sourly. He wouldn’t give himself the honour.

His parents, dirt-poor in their hovel, had taught him that one’s true home was comprised of the people you cared about. For many, many years, that had kept him from belonging anywhere.

How unexpectedly things can change.

“Caleb, you look ill. Are you ill? Have you eaten?”

He shrugs at Nott – Veth, now, he is a fool not to remember – who has joined him at the posterior of their party, the group of them moving as one organism toward the city centre. He can’t seem to stop feeling like the sore thumb, stuck out.

“I’ll have something when we reach the Chateau,” he promises. “It hasn’t been that much time since breakfast.” He cannot quite repress a small shudder. Caduceus really can make anything out of mushrooms. Even if he doesn’t necessarily have to.

“Still. You were practically bleeding out on the deck when that monster attacked.” Veth hands him her water-skin. “And I know how dehydrated you get in hotter climes. You need to keep your strength up.”

“Both Beau and Yasha were worse off than me,” he says, amused, but he takes a swig from her water-skin anyway. He’ll self-immolate before he admits it, but he rather misses being coddled now and then by Veth-not-Nott. It’s not a topic he will ever be able to broach without making an ass of himself. He keeps slipping up just trying navigating the new space between them, freshly clumsy when he touches her, or asks a favour of her, or invites her to share a bed on the road. There was some innocence lost in the mad dash to get her husband, then her son to safety, some incontrovertible transformation before she was ever entombed in fecund clay. He began to see her as a woman instead of his goblin friend, began to see himself as a single being rather than one half of a surviving animal. He’d once envisioned nightmarish scenarios of their forced separation, being jailed or enslaved or captured; he’d never conceived of the possibility of it happening slowly, nobly, of occurring because of a reunion, of all things.

Veth squeezes his hand. “You went away again,” she says, indignant, but he can sense her concern. “Are you really okay?”

“Oh, you know me,” he says lightly. “Always worrying.”

_Zuhause liegt im herzen._ He thinks, unfortunately for me. Even now he can close his eyes and see Astrid’s pointy teeth bared in a grin; he blinks and she morphs into Wulf’s signature glower. Sixteen years on and he still crumbles at these mirages he conjures for himself, this liar of a memory that will help or hinder sleep, depending on the night. He imagines forming Veth and the others out of nothing but scraps of the past. It’s a hateful thought.

“Well, don’t. We’re going to have some down-time, a few quiet days before we join Jester’s cult, so you should relax.”

The people are clustering thicker the closer they get to the main thoroughfare, and he tightens his grip on Veth automatically.

“I don’t think relaxing is in the cards for me,” he admits, but hope bubbles in his chest. “Does that mean – I mean – you’re definitely coming with us, then?”

“I wouldn’t miss it!” she exclaims, and the relief swells, inflating him so he’s nearly floating. He smiles down at her, and is so thrown by her rising blush that he strides right into a stall laden with racks of mangoes.

His enthusiasm propels him off the stall and onto the ground, where he is soon not only lying in the ruins of mangoes, but is also being pummelled by the few that hadn’t been launched by his initial impact, a veritable hailstorm of citrus. He licks his tangy lips, exasperated, as the guffaws and gasps starts to erupt around him. “ _Schei_ _ße_ ,” he says, for a lack of better options.

“Are ya shittin’ me right now?”

A brawny dwarf tramps around the stall. He looks about twice Caleb’s own age, robust and unscarred, some of his dark hair braided intricately into his extensive beard. His swarthy face is twisted with incredulity that’s rapidly giving way to fury, his bristly fists curling, and Caleb knows he has two feet on the man but that’s hard to prove from the ground.

“Uh,” he says blankly, as Veth quakes from somewhere to his right, her dress splattered with juice. He has always known she deplores being the centre of attention, and this proves that’s the case whether she has green skin and floppy ears or not. He’s certain she’s seconds from scarpering on instinct, and he’s about to reassure her when a pair of hands wind into his Xhorhasian-silk shirt and yank him into a cloud of halitosis.

“That’s my livelihood ya just busted up, ya prick,” the dwarf snarls, nose-to-nose. “I hope you’ve got deep pockets in that pansy coat, because otherwise yer workin’ off this mess!”

“I – it was an accident,” he stutters out, all too aware of the fireball that’s heating his fingertips, nourished by his panic. He’s not crazy – not anymore – but he doesn’t like to be grabbed. He also doesn’t want to cause a scene in Jester’s hometown.

Not another one, at the very least.

“That’s not good enough,” the dwarf spits, just as a maelstrom of blue and olive-green whirls into view, an arrowhead tail swishing with deadly speed.

“Let him go,” snaps Jester, arms akimbo. “He just told you it was an accident.”

The dwarf drops him unceremoniously, and he thumps back down onto the sticky dirt. He supposes he should be glad the city is mostly dusty and dry, though he’s managed to create his own mud. He heaves himself up to his elbows, at which point Veth materialises, helpfully propping him up the rest of the way. Jester is still facing down the dwarf merchant, who is fully crimson and roaring by now, heedless of the rest of the Mighty Nein gathering around the chaos in bemusement.

“He owes me a day’s income!”

“Say you’re sorry for being so mean and we’ll help you out,” states Jester, stepping backwards and hooking an arm through Caleb’s. He freezes, her skirt blown out of its pleats and around his legs. Her tail, still slicing through the air in agitation, keeps the others at bay.

“Are ya an idiot, girl? This dotard insulted _me_ by ruining my wares!”

“Don’t call her an idiot,” he says sharply, as Jester cries, “don’t talk about him like that!”

They glance at one another briefly, Jester’s offence melting into mirth as laughter, like music, bursts forth from her open mouth. Caleb’s frown is permanently etched but even he manages to snicker a little, the smell of mango, the dwarf’s outrage and the curiosity of the rest of the Nein reminding him of the absurdity of it all. Jester’s horn brushes the fuzz on his jaw and he checks himself, stiffening, even as Jester’s tail curves over the stone, almost encircling his ankle. He can’t think of when she had been this close before. That time she gave him a makeshift version of the kiss of life?

He’s overheating again, no longer just at the tips of his fingers, when Jester presses him back to allow Fjord to intervene. Their captain’s silver tongue dispels the tension Caleb had created almost immediately, as he apologises like a diplomat, paying off the dwarf in platinum and even sharing a bruised mango with him as a tribute to his unparalleled, yet wasted product. Jester is enraptured by the performance, her shoulders drawn up and her tail, once again, in motion. He lets himself watch, gratitude spiralling into guilt the longer he stares, hungry, seeking more of that kindness, that feckless generosity of spirit. Does it cost her, to give of herself so freely, or is it a feedback loop of positivity? He wishes he had the self-governance to mimic it, to find out, but he doesn’t even possess the will to tear his eyes away from her.

She should be dazzled by Fjord, he thinks. She’s taken in by beauty, and insouciance, and good humour, things that have eluded him since he was a pernickety student. That love makes sense. That love could become something real.

What is he but a bottomless pit of grief and weakness? What right has he to watch her?

There is a hand in his hand, small and warm. Veth pulls him into the crowd, which had lost interest in the mango incident mere seconds after it occurred. He straightens up, adjusts his spattered clothes. The Nein follow, joking and teasing them, and congratulating Fjord on his quick wit, to which Veth retorts, “There’s a first time for everything!”

“Enough of that,” he says, low, the others chattering over them. “He did save us.”

“Jester saved you,” she admonishes, and he is forced to recall Jester’s body, aligned with his, and the protection it implied. He’s so used to getting lost in her pranks and infectious joy that he forgets how ferociously she fights, and how good it feels to have her do it on his behalf.

(Astrid would stand before Ikithon and claim the mistake was hers, as the punishment should be; she had stroked his hair when he wept, charred and shattered; she had been relieved to see him even with a wine-stain burn on her throat.)

It changes nothing. He knows his place. It’s at Jester’s back, not her side.

“Caleb?”

Veth is tethered to him. How could he have drifted away again, indulging himself in fantasies, and memories that are more of a torture device than anything dreamed up by his old master? He has to be present for Nott. Veth. Both of them, for as long as she needs, until she decides she’s outgrown him. He owes her that.

“I’m here,” he tells her, the others fading into the ambiance of the city as they stroll. “I’m sorry. I’m here.”


	4. I Really Like You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from the song by [Carly Rae Jepsen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTKD7X0mFq8)

_Oh, did I say too much?  
I'm so in my head  
When we're outta touch (outta touch)  
I really, really, really, really, really, really like you  
And I want you, do you want me, do you want me too?_

Jester starts to sprint when she catches sight of the Lavish Chateau, painted pale blue against the deeper shade of the sky, its tall windows gilded by the sunlight. She shrieks a greeting to the zhelezo guarding the front doors, their heads turning in bewilderment as she becomes all but a blur to them, the scant patrons inside the lobby, and likely her own friends. She calls out shrilly for the latter to hurry up, then proceeds up the main staircase; the first landing is empty, the second hosts nothing but a scandalised Nadine and her teetering trays, and the third is a wall of muscle and fur.

“Oh. Sorry, Jester.”

Bluud steps aside, and she climbs down from her high-impact hug, cackling wildly. She runs, and runs, and runs, and then she has to pull up fast, because her mother is in front of her and crooning. By the time the rest of the Mighty Nein have caught up, she’s five minutes into the story about the dragon-turtle, which she knows is about to take a sharp turn into Caleb planting himself face-first into a mango stall. She’s unspooling upwards of eight words a second, but she’s barely at the point of Beau delivering the killing blow to the sea monster when Fjord interjects, mumbling something about baths.

She dances up close and sniffs him. “You’re fine. You smell like –,”

“Some seamen?” says Veth, eyelashes fluttering innocently. Fjord’s face darkens to forest-green, and he mutters a vague threat to her security on the next ship she boards. Veth counteracts it with a comment about his chicken legs, which Jester is obliged to defend on principle. She mentions how sculpted they are, and is just about to delve further into the exact dimensions of his calves when Marion places a hand on her shoulder.

“Much as I enjoy hearing about well-endowed young men,” she says, causing Fjord to splutter, “your friends are right, my dear. You all look as though you have been put through a terrible ordeal.”

Around her neck, Sprinkle hacks up something phlegmy, and she pets him back into her cloak.

“We have! I have blood in my –,” Beau checks under her waistband – “uh, everywhere, apparently. The _Ball-Eater_ ’s wash-up stations are shit, by the way. _Fjord_.”

“Why is it my fault?”

“You are Captain,” Caleb notes, and Caduceus nods approvingly. “A tremendous one,” he rumbles, and Beau rolls her eyes, gesturing to her trousers and bemoaning the copious stains. Caleb tries to offer his opinion on the state of her ragged garments, which starts another argument that develops into shouting as Veth yells over them for her husband and son. Jester is moments from leaping in to either comfort a sulking Fjord or clamp her palm over Veth’s mouth when Marion sweeps in behind her and guides her over to the side.

“It’s been almost three weeks, my love. Bathing can be arranged, but – are you sure you’re all right?”

She hugs her again because she cannot help it, squeezing her middle and almost lifting her off her feet. She’s careful, though. She knows intimately how to hold someone without hurting them, knows how to press herself to a person or an animal or a stuffed bear so that they can both feel safe. It’s one of the first things she learned from her mother, and the very first thing she taught the Traveller. The most important thing, maybe. She has so much more to share with him when she sees him at their meeting.

“We’re fine, Mama. Just dirty.”

“That’s good,” says Marion, rubbing her back. “I was worried. But at least now you have the chance for –,”

“Bubble baths!” she trills, knocking the others out of their squabble and summoning their interest with almost comedic synchronicity. Jester is practically vibrating with delight when she reminds them of the Chateau’s many attributes, and it’s not long until they’re debating who gets to use the washrooms first. Caleb tells them to wake him whenever one’s free, and disappears down the hall to his old guest room, dripping juice; Caduceus claims his moss keeps him clean enough, and lopes off when they start questioning the efficacy of his methods. Yasha similarly retreats as Veth vanishes to the second floor to see her family, which leaves Beau and Fjord to high-five and scatter for their winnings. Jester is so entertained by them that she forgets to let them know they can use the penthouse washrooms. The baths in there are luxuriously spacious.

Evening descends like a blanket tucking the city in for the night, soft and warm and close. The street music that drifts in the open windows during the daytime has succumbed to the rattling of cartwheels, a number of drunken voices, and squawking birds of prey. Jester, skipping alone down the corridor from her mother’s room, detects the last of the buskers in the sombre notes of a trombone in the distance, perhaps the faintest chords of a lute from even further away. Underneath all of it is the ever present crash of the ocean, and the clinking and clattering of silverware from the bar below them. The routines are as familiar to her as the legends of the Ruby, as reliable as the Traveller’s strength. She can unwind here like nowhere else. She thinks it might have been different coming back, though, if her friends hadn’t come too. She sleeps easier with them within her grasp.

She contemplates this, humming as she makes her way into the guest common room. She dips in, seeking out her ivory hairbrush, and instead discovers Fjord, leaning over his knees with his head in his hands.

She pauses, wavering between the room and the hallway, but she’s _Jester_ and she would sooner eat her own foot than leave someone by themselves when they appear to be in such a state – let alone one of her best friends, a member of her party, let alone Fjord, of all people. He hasn’t even noticed her, his shoulders juddering under a thin shirt, like he’s containing any possible sounds he could make and pushing them down, deep where no-one can get them out again. Not even him.

It sears her tender heart, so susceptible to the capricious mood of the Mighty Nein. If one of them is hurting, she hurts too.

“Fjord?”

He shoots up, streaming apologies as he hides his face, coughing out a laugh that falls flat. She approaches, feeling silly in her nightgown and slippers, and tries not to look at the planes of Fjord’s bare chest under the folds of his shirt. It’s a struggle, until the thin streaks down Fjord’s cheek glisten in the amber lamplight. Her tail droops in sympathy.

“Oh… Oh Fjord, are you… are you crying?”

He rubs a hand over his face and through his hair, which winds past his jaw when it’s not styled or kept stiff by the sea spraying over it every five minutes. He looks younger, and much more lost.

“Sorry, I just – I didn’t think anyone would be – I’m sorry, I thought you’d all be sleeping, so –,”

“Stop saying you’re sorry, and tell me what’s wrong,” she says mock-sternly, aiming to lift his spirits. When he just sinks back to the sofa like someone forced him down there, her tail hits the floor. It drags over the plush carpet as she trots over to him, and slithers into a spiral when she sits cross-legged at his feet. “Now it’s my turn to be sorry,” she says, prodding his shin.

Fjord rises somewhat from his slump, offering her a wan smile. She responds with a fiercer version, and eagerly snatches up his hand when he eventually reaches out for her.

“I’m afraid I’ll dream.”

Jester tilts her head. “You mean tonight, or ever again?”

“It might be better if I never dreamed again, to be honest.” He huffs again, just as hollow. “Please… please don’t tell anyone about this, okay, but – but I have nightmares, right, about Uk’otoa. Nightmares where I don’t throw up seawater."

“Uk’otoa,” she begins, “he talked to you all the time, then?”

“When he spoke directly to me – ‘consume’, ‘punish’, all that ominous crap – it was because he owned me. Now, he doesn’t, so it’s just my own brain eating itself. Making me insane.” He wipes his eyes again, turns away from her. “And it’s… it’s Avantika, too. I see her die. Over and over again.”

Her stomach clenches, like the presage of vomit. “You – you regret giving her up like we did?”

“No.” He gazes into the distance, a thousand yards from the prettily decorated little lounge in her mother’s quarters. “No, I don’t.”

They sit for a while, long enough that Jester’s famously fragile patience with any sort of silence wears through, but she doesn’t ruin it, not even to tap her tail. After several long minutes Fjord slides out of his slouch onto the floor opposite, cross-legged just like her. It’s a little cramped between the sofa and the coffee-table, but Jester doesn’t mind. Not at all.

“It’s cosy,” she pipes up, because it’s slightly dizzying to be holding Fjord’s hand, and to have her naked knee rest against his knee at the same time.

“Yeah.” He sighs. “Listen, I am sorry. For putting you all in danger out there. I thought he’d let me go.”

“Lucky for you, we won’t let you go either,” she promises. “If it’s dreams or a real monster, we’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

There’s an instance like the clocks have stopped, like they’re stuck in a vacuum where her ears should be popping. Her pulse thunders in her veins and she’s moving, tipping to fill the space between their lips. Fjord is coming closer or just looking up, his eyes embers in a jungle grove –

“And in _here_ we can – oh!”

They break apart, Fjord scrambling up as though electrocuted. Time resumes a normal pace as he tells Veth and a scarlet Yeza, incredibly, that they were discussing battle plans. Veth insists she understands with an exaggerated wink, towing her husband back and out of the room; Jester allows it to happen, groaning at her luck. She only gets up to forcibly shoo them away when Veth doubles back to try to advise them on sexual positions.

Fjord joins her by the open door, scratching the back of his head. “I should,” he says, open-ended, so she replies, “me too.” It’s easy to say, even if she doesn’t mean it. She doesn’t want Fjord to feel like a dick. She wants him to be happy.

The kiss that Fjord drops on her forehead is so brief that she thinks she may have imagined it. Long after he murmurs “goodnight, then,” and trudges away, she decides it was real. It hits her like an arrow to the skull, blowing her mind right out.

She heads in the direction of her room, but her blood is singing, taking her elsewhere. She ends up outside of Beau’s door, knocking like a woodpecker until Beau lets her in, her hair mussed from sleep.

“Beau. Beau.” She’s bouncing. “Beau, you will not believe what just happened.”

Beau is already ambling back to bed, her movements sluggish. “Damn, that’s crazy,” she slurs, collapsing onto the feather-stuffed mattress and lying still as the dead. Jester closes the door quietly and follows her in, snuggling into her side where she knows it’s the most comfortable. Beau’s arm curls over her waist and she arches against her with a pleased grunt. They have money now, so they don’t have to pile on each other like they did in the old days, but it’s nice. Jester prefers it to any other way, although when she says this to Beau when she’s awake and alert, the reaction is mystifying. Beau usually makes excuses to avoid answering her proposition of sharing a bed indefinitely, though she obviously likes doing it as much as Jester.

Beau snores, and she flicks her nose.

“Agh.”

“Don’t you want to hear my news?”

“T’m’row. Sl’p’n.”

“But Beau, it’s Fjord! We were talking and he was leaning right into me, okay, and then –,”

A finger squishes her lips and locks the words inside them. She can only see one of Beau’s eyes, shining strangely in the dim starlight. “Not now,” she says. “Please.”

“Okay,” Jester whispers. “Okay, sure.” She wriggles so that she can tuck her head under Beau’s chin, so it’s less awkward for Beau to embrace her fully. They fit together like a jigsaw.

Beau goes to sleep almost immediately. Jester stays awake, thinking about Fjord’s lips and Fjord’s dreams and Fjord’s fear, but she’s soon lulled by Beau’s rhythmic heart, inches from her own.


	5. Repeat Until Death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from the song by [Novo Amor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbnjLHZfC9I)

_Oh, I can't seem to let myself leave you  
But I can't breathe anymore  
Oh, I can't seem to not need to need you  
And I can't breathe anymore_

Unbelievably, a whole day passes before Jester brings up Traveller Con, a whole day of rest on mercifully firm land that ends with a sing-song voice announcing their departure at dawn. Veth supposes it was never meant to last; they’d all known this ridiculous event was the culmination of months of build-up, and now it’s a meagre three days away. She almost resents the obligation she feels to attend, but it would be churlish to back out at this stage, especially since she’s already left her family for a diplomatic mission that didn’t necessarily demand her abilities. This venture is going to involve cultists and a pretender god, all focused on Jester and their party, which is surely a more viable reason for ditching her husband and son. Surely.

Yeza helps her pack for the trip, and she takes the opportunity to describe in lurid detail the most recent schemes of the Traveller, prioritising the creepy over the funny for dramatic value. Once she mentions the volcano, however, a furrow deepens in his brow.

“Melora preserve us,” he says, stopping in the middle of folding her underwear. “Are you sure this – fellow – has the best intentions for your tiefling friend? And by extension, the rest of you?”

“I really have no idea,” she admits, unsticking a toy crossbow bolt from her cheek. “Don’t shoot at the head, Luc! I’ve told you already!”

There’s the faintest “sorr-eee,” from the hallway, as tiny pattering footsteps carry the offender away. She grins in pride and pockets the bolt. His aim is improving.

“So,” presses Yeza, her laundered bloomers forgotten across his lap, “a god might be luring you all into a trap?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t think of it that way.” Though she is thinking about it, right now. Beau, a pessimist, is still certain the Traveller will carry Jester off into the sunset the moment they take their eyes off of her. Caleb is even worse, predicting riots and explosions of lava and brimstone once the petitioners realise they’ve been had, or the Traveller arrives and becomes disappointed with the turnout. All Veth had ever wanted out of it was a simple celebration – with explosions – and for Jester to feel accomplished in her role as a high priestess. Now she’s going all Caleb, overthinking everything, like her anxiety isn’t bad enough.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” she says dismissively, tucking steel bolts into her sealed quiver. “I mean, the guy’s pretty goofy, you know, doesn’t seem like the type to get all vengeful. He seemed like he cared about Jester as much as she cares about him.” A symbiotic relationship, she thinks. He gave her power, and she gives him unconditional love.

She curls a length of wire around her finger, measuring it before packing it carefully with her other components. She is reminded of Caleb, and his instructions on keeping herself prepped for spellcasting at the drop of a hat, both to remain nimble and to ensure she’s never caught off guard in battle. There had been many nights, curled together in some inn or alley, when he had drilled her in arcana both verbal and somatic. He’d clasped her wrist, eyes sunken under the glow of his dancing lights, and had arranged her fingers, not shying from her gnarled claws even when they trembled. He’d said: nothing is immutable; anything can be altered; people, places, things. The two of us.

She’d asked: Us?

And he’d nodded, let her scramble into his lap while he whispered about transmutation and the might of studied, scrupulously learned magic. He’d been reverent while he waxed about his passion, and she had followed suit. It was easy, marvelling at whatever came out of his mouth. He was both the conduit for her deliverance and the source of it. She would have killed for him on the spot.

“I hope it’s worth it,” says Yeza, and she plugs herself back into the conversation, hastily stuffing the wire into a compartment at her belt. “What is?” she asks, suddenly off-kilter and guilty, for some reason. She chides herself that it’s not a crime for her to think about Caleb. He’s practically family.

Yeza abandons her spare underclothes on the bed beside him. His nose wrinkles in that adorable way that Veth knows means he’s about to make a frustratingly good point about something sensitive. 

“This… this convention… it’ll be dangerous, right?”

They’ve broached the topic of her perilous occupation only a handful of times since her transformation, probably because it makes her nervy as a neglected weasel whenever they do. She doesn’t do it to manufacture tension, but she knows it’s rising anyway. It’s the last question mark in their relationship, in their happy ending. This is the part of the jaunty ballad where they retire and die in peace, and she’s screwing it up.

She finds another loose component – a feather this time – and twirls it, just to have something to do. “It may be,” she allows. “But as we talked about before, you know, I still have things I need to do before I come back for good – important tasks, and promises I’ve made to my friends. A lot of those things involve danger.”

Yeza is gazing out their stained-glass window, where the buildings outside are hued blue, the sliver of sea is pink, and the sky is purple. A topsy-turvy world.

“I worry,” he says, without even a tinge of bitterness, but it cuts her to the heart anyway. She wants to yell that she gets it, she understands, because _she_ worries too – all day, each night, no longer plagued by memories of her own death but instead visions of the deaths of her family, old and new. She protected Caleb because she couldn’t return home to protect her husband and son, but now they’re safe and Caleb is still vulnerable, still raw, still attached. She goes where she is needed. She has always been a woman of action, no matter if it made her a target.

“You have to trust me,” she tells him. She doesn’t plead, though perhaps she should. From his perspective, she’s about to gallivant with her buddies while he raises their son, alone. All her justifications that it’s a selfless act to aid her party die in her throat, because she knows that regardless, what she’s doing looks selfish – is selfish, when you get down to the bare bones of it. The reality is that she’s terrified of staying, and one day receiving a message: _Oh haiii, eet’s Jester, just wanted to let you know, poor Caleb died horribly without you here to save him, doo-doo doo doo doo…_

Gods above. She’d lose her mind.

“I need to be with them,” she says firmly, shrugging on her jacket. “It’s not permanent. I said I would come back one day for good, and I will – I just have to make sure I’ve finished what I started out there. He – they need me more right now.”

It was a mistake to say that aloud, she realises the instant it leaves her lips, but she can’t take it back and it’s the truth whether they like it or not. Yeza stands, walks up and kisses her sweetly.

“I don’t know if you’re right,” he says quietly, “but I don’t think you are.”

He helps her finish packing in silence, though it’s sorrowful, not hostile. She avoids confronting it when Luc pelts into the room, and she remembers that she has to make another goodbye. Her brave boy is not perturbed by her declaration of yet another departure, though he hugs her for an unexpectedly long time and wraps his fingers around one of her braids, the way he hasn’t done since he was a toddler. Her guilt returns, nauseating, a flood.

She meets the Mighty Nein in the lobby of the Chateau, and takes the hand that Caleb offers without preamble. When she turns back to the first floor bannister to wave to her family, they are already gone.

“Ready?” he asks, oblivious, as the others start loading up. She nods, though she’s weighed down, crushed into the floor. There will be residue of her here, even as her body is spirited away.

Fjord argues that they should check in at the Xhorhaus before heading to the volcano, especially since they have a housekeeper to pay and a drow wizard down the street that owes them a favour. Beau and Yasha agree, and Caduceus rambles about his untended garden, so before they know it they’re on their way to Yussa’s tower to borrow his teleportation circle.

Jester is sulking, annoyed by the diversion. Veth tries and fails to sympathise. It’s a sucker-punch, because drawing this out should feel like a drag. She should be begging to get back to Nicodranas as soon as possible.

“You’ve been awfully quiet,” murmurs Caleb, the two of them bringing up the rear as the party wends through the city. “Are you all right?”

She adjusts her jacket, which had been tailored by one of the Ruby’s maids to fit her new figure. Old figure, she angrily rectifies. Stupid mistake.

“I’m fine,” she says, pitchy. “Just… wondering about some stuff.”

Caleb pats her shoulder. “You must be upset about leaving your family. I’m – I’m very sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” she replies, as they pass storefronts and stalls and strung lanterns, this district every part the idyllic beach retreat. “It was my choice to do it.”

Caleb doesn’t respond at once, just walks abreast of her in solemn solidarity, one finger stroking the burgeoning stubble on his chin. He hadn’t shaved today. She should have reminded him, she thinks, and perhaps urged him to trim his hair too, although it looks so beautiful when it’s loose in the sun like it is now, molten fire complemented by the plum of his coat.

“We can get you back soon,” he tells her, when the base of the tower is in sight. “I’m learning the glyphs of new circles all the time, so it will be easy –,”

“Thank you,” Veth says, mostly to make him stop talking. She can’t take much more guilt. She’ll burst at the straining seams, and it’ll trickle out of her for all to see. “Thank you, Caleb, I – I don’t know what I would do without you.”

“Nor I without you,” he assures her. He nods to where Jester is prancing around Beau, who somehow hasn’t whacked her with that stick yet. “Can you believe this, eh? All this hullabaloo because of a girl and her god of questionable origin.”

“Madness,” she agrees. His attention is divided, but she’s used to that. She keeps to what she knows, staying right on his heels, following him like they’re tied together.


	6. Another Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from the song by [Tom Odell](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwpMEbgC7DA)

_And I wanna kiss you, make you feel alright  
I'm just so tired to share my nights  
I wanna cry and I wanna love  
But all my tears have been used up_

The magic circle that Caleb draws spits them back into Rosohna, which is dark and austere as ever, seemingly unchanged by the peace summit on the ocean. Yasha allows the sharper eyes among them to rake their surroundings for spies or assassins, itching to grip her sword the whole way back to their headquarters. She senses she’s not alone in her vigilance; Beau flanks the group from the other side, jaw tilted up to stare down any and all passing civilians.

They reach the house in record time, every one of them on edge. They greet and abruptly dismiss the housekeeper for the day, Veth shoving gold into her arms as she instructs her to return by dawn. The girl leaves in a hurry, seemingly spooked by Frumpkin’s yowling, or perhaps the way the rest of the party stares at her, silent, until she closes the door on them.

“Can’t be too careful,” Fjord grunts, dumping his pack by the stairs. “All right, we’ve got a few hours to stock up for this thing, so everyone buy your batshit and paper or whatever and be back here by the afternoon. Got it?”

“Got it,” they chorus, and go about shedding themselves of their bedrolls and frayed cloaks, releasing a collective sigh as they settle back into the familiarity of the Xhorhaus. Yasha doesn’t want to strip herself of her scant belongings just yet, so instead she places one of the extra orchids she’d been gifted by Marion Lavorre on the mantelpiece. Its petals are twilight-pink, a merry reminder that she – that they – had survived another bout of adventuring.

It’s nice. She’s helping to create a home that remembers them.

Caduceus raises the subject of Essek Thelyss, which prompts Fjord and Caleb to deliberate about confronting him again. Veth and Jester advocate for a much-needed shopping trip in lieu of bothering him – or as Veth venomously puts it, “we have things to do that are worthier of our time.” Apparently none of them have nearly enough green in their wardrobe, nor any party favours, costumes, or a sufficient amount of explosives.

The men agree to catch up with the elusive Essek while Veth and Jester seek out convention paraphernalia and revivification diamonds. The bustle is such that they’re all girded and out the door within minutes, Yasha having turned down an offer to join either group as cordially as possible. She’s recalling the rigmarole of the past weeks, and picturing the mania that’s likely to come; it’s enough to make her yearn for little time alone with her book. Maybe the bone-harp, if she’s feeling bold.

“Are they gone?”

She swivels to see Beau tip-toeing halfway down the stairs, unwrapped bandages trailing from her wrists. “I have to get some meditation in,” she confides, scurrying down a few more feet, “just in case there are any fights at this thing. And Nott – Veth, I mean – man, her chemical experiments –,”

“They can be distracting,” smiles Yasha, privately elated that she’s not alone in her asocial behaviour, paradoxical though that might be. “I think so too.”

“Cool,” says Beau easily, as she pulls the linen fully away from her arms. The sight of them bare stupefies Yasha, for a brief second. “You can, uh. You know. Join me, if you want.”

Yasha cannot keep the relief out of her voice as she says, “that would be wonderful.” Beau grins, clearly surprised by her uncharacteristic enthusiasm, and beckons her up to Caduceus’s garden. Yasha has to work to keep her gait casual, energy circulating within her like heat.

The garden is pleasantly warm, and aromatic with the profusion of greenery. Tiny, magic-infused globules bathe the little enclosure in pure daylight, a stark contrast to the flat black of the sky above them. If Yasha looks up and squints, the darkness is all she can see: a muted background to the swaying boughs of the great tree.

“Over here,” calls Beau, cross-legged between crops of acacia. Yasha side-steps a spiny gorse bush to join her, the ground beneath them slightly spongy with moss. It gets quiet as soon as they shut their eyes and stop moving, the noise of the town disappearing with the thickness of the walls and the faint drone of Caduceus’s bees, the cushioning of their breath swallowing the world.

Yasha takes note of her pulse, the dull glugging that suggests she’s alive. The humidity clings to her skin and makes everything seem contained, confined, inducing her to sweat like a horse, and so she inhales harshly. She catalogues the smells around her: the abundance of flowers and their manifold sweetness; the candle smoke from the Wildmother’s diminutive shrine; the musky scent of Beau, the salt and perfume from Nicodranas not yet washed from her vestment.

Her muscles are relaxing to a near-liquid state. Every sensation is immediate and yet distant, both tangible and abstract in a way that permits her to release the tension she’d been maintaining for weeks. She feels secure in her body, but doesn’t feel the need to lock herself inside it any longer. It takes several languid minutes (or hours) for her to identify that feeling, that wild unknown of certain, all-encompassing safety.

She stretches slightly, just a flex of her arms, and bumps into Beau’s scabbed knuckles. She’s unwound too, her tendons smooth for once, her limbs springy and loose.

“Mmm. Feel better?” Beau’s voice is lazy and lower than before, and Yasha’s insides twinge – she assumes with anxiety, but beneath that, digging deeper, she locates its nexus: a jolt of desire so urgent that her heart starts to throb.

“I feel –,” she whispers, and doesn’t finish, though she does keep her eyes adamantly closed – tightly enough to create lines. If she adjusts her head her eyelids burn gold, or pink, or a velvety black. She angles her line of sight towards Beau, expecting – something. A shower of sparks, or a single flare that radiates every colour of the rainbow. She searches for her, in the dark, but it’s difficult to see with the wet air choking her, the overwhelming aroma of flowers all of a sudden searing her nostrils and throat.

“Yeah,” says Beau, and Yasha refuses to look but she can tell that Beau’s eyes are open, that she’s being scrutinised in return. A narrow, calloused hand curves around her fingers, incongruously gentle. It seems cruel of her to think that way, considering what her own hands have wrought, but then she doesn’t really know Beau, does she?

“Hey. Are you good?”

It’s a fair question. The only question, really. Yasha breathes out crookedly, something constricting her chest. She imagines that if she were to cough, she’d expel a puff of silky petals that would smell like a gravesite.

“I’m okay,” she forces out, and opens her eyes. Beau is glistening with sweat, strands of hair stuck to her forehead. She looks soft. She looks worried.

“I’m okay,” she repeats, except she isn’t, not in the slightest. Beau is ducking to see her hanging head, and it’s only then that she understands how much she has hunched, how much she has tried to sink down, to cower into nothing. It was easy to do it unconsciously. Cowardice is her default position, after all.

“You’re not.” Beau sounds angry now, but Yasha doesn’t think it’s directed at her. Beau grabs her forearm, nudges her jaw so they can see one another fully. “Talk to me. Are you in a bad place again?”

She means: Are you going to pay another stranger to beat you half to death?

Yasha doesn’t have the words in Common to explain that she’s too tired for violence at this moment, and that even the kind touches of someone she cares about impact like she’s being struck. Her gut heaves with contradictions, enough to enervate her: sorrow wars with excitement, and guilt rages against arousal, interest, hope. Beau’s hand burns, and the floral fumes strangle her admission, the fading pleas for help in carrying her burden. She thinks, I should not be here.

“I forgot,” she mumbles, sliding away from Beau and her endless grasping, forever the one to pull all of them out of the water, or the muck, or the dust of a place where nothing grows. She’s too generous for someone like Yasha. She deserves someone freer, someone – else.

Yasha deserves – well. Whatever she’s left with now.

“I have to get ready. For when we leave.” She stands up, rubbing burrs and pollen from her trousers. The globules of daylight immortalise Beau’s crestfallen face in her mind, and it smarts; she lurches as though to stop her when Beau turns away, her fists once again taut, and hard.

“Yeah. Yeah, me too.” Her shoulders are a ridge of corded muscle. “I’ll see you later.”

Yasha descends the stairs with a rock in her stomach. The house is quiet, the others still out on their errands. She is not so far gone that she doesn’t ponder their absence with some concern, but her instinct to protect is being drowned out by the need for self-preservation, a rare but devastating occurrence. At least in her experience.

She finds her way to her room, to the bone-harp and a shelf of trinkets and a dresser garnished with nothing but gifts from the rest of the party: buttons and cat figurines and a single swatch of embroidered fabric, flecked with old blood.

The mural on the wall opposite her bed is the fixture, though, the main draw for anyone who so much as passes by her open door. The colour does not burst from the stone, but invites you in; the feathery brush strokes, masterful use of perspective, and ostensibly infinite shades of blue sky pull at you like music. It’s like falling into another world – one where she chose to stay, or fight, or kill, instead of escaping like a pathetic scrap of prey.

She retrieves her book, thick with verdant souvenirs from every corner of the continent. Daffodils from Felderwin. Daisies and petunias from Hupperdook. Posies plucked on the road to Zadash. There are also several handfuls of tattered sprigs with no names, bright and torn, collected by her friends when she was lost, or being kept from them. She was never embarrassed by their thoughtfulness in this, because the flowers were not for her, not really. She was happy to accept them on behalf of one who couldn’t.

And the book isn’t yet full. She cannot go back until the book is full.

Yasha spreads the book open on the floor in front of the mural, and without Beau’s proximity the scent of the flowers doesn’t hurt quite as much. Everything else does.

“I’m coming to you, my love,” she rasps, and the tears spill over, streams of black from her kohl makeup that drip onto the blank pages of her book, staining it with blots that spread like ink. She swipes at her face, and lies down on her side where she can see nothing but the wall, and the shadow she casts over it. She clutches the book to her breast and strokes the impenetrable stone, until the flowers seem to blow in a non-existent breeze.

Zuala’s laughter filters back to her from a dream, a recurring dream where they find new life together. They pick miraculous flowers from the dead earth and keep the stems submerged in water, tending to them so carefully that they never wither. They hide the flowers so they will not be stolen, and no-one ever finds them. They rot to bones in their secret alcove and the flowers grow around them, through them. It is lonely; it is peaceful.


	7. Futile Devices

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from the song by [Sufjan Stevens](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MpKP9b_NJQ)

_And I would say I love you  
But saying it out loud is hard  
So I won't say it at all  
And I won't stay very long_

_But you are life I needed all along_   
_I think of you as my brother_   
_Although that sounds dumb_

“Caduceus! Where’s my –,”

“Dining room,” he responds, curved over the stove, a ladle raised to his lips. “Unless you were about to say ‘throwing stars’, not ‘ball bearings’, in which case I will instead say ‘Caleb’s room’.”

Beau reaches up to ruffle his hair, and only succeeds in dislodging a patch of lichen. “Thanks, man,” she chirps, and vanishes back into the main hallway, roaring for their wizard.

Caduceus smiles at the sound, which is as good a signifier for the general health of their party as a croak is from a toad. They’re on track if Caleb and Beauregard have time to get into an argument. It’s almost soothing.

There’s the ominous crack of a firebolt hitting marble tiles, and a screeching retort.

Almost.

He stirs the pot of mushroom soup, a group favourite, and adds a dash of black pepper from the small snuff-box he usually keeps in the side pocket of his satchel. They’re on a schedule, about to set off for a volcano in about an hour, but Caduceus is of the mind that travelling on an empty stomach is a recipe for disaster. His people need to be energised for the trials ahead. There’s a bacchanalia planned, for goodness’ sake, and those things are tiring.

He lifts the ladle, but is swayed off course again by a hurricane of blue, Jester nearly crashing into him as she tows Veth into the kitchen behind her.

“Cad-yoo-ceus,” she whines, as Veth struggles to re-string her crossbow one-handed, “I forgot to tell Nadine that my green shift is all gooey from that fight against Uk’otoa’s cronies –,”

“Uk’otoa?” Caduceus taps his chin playfully, then chortles and nods to the slip of emerald silk hanging over the towel rack. “Not a problem. I soaked and scoured it for you as soon as we got back from Essek’s house.”

Jester squeals, grabs the dress, and darts up to plant a kiss on his cheek – once he leans down to receive the favour, of course. Veth crows a complaint about needing oil for the gears on her crossbow, and Caduceus has barely advised her to look in the upper cabinet in the training room before Jester is dragging her out by the sleeve. They’re all operating as though afflicted by a haste spell, and yet they appear to be making very little progress in actually leaving the house. Caduceus can only hope they agree to eat in the midst of rushing back and forth like mice under floorboards.

He drops a bloom of rosemary into his concoction, stirring again, and listens intently for footsteps; all he can hear is the distant racket of whatever Beau and Caleb are doing to each other, so he brings the ladle close…

“Deucey!”

He jumps and drops the ladle, which lands in the pot with a spray of soup.

“Hey,” he says feebly, just as Fjord says, “shit! Do you need a hand?” and hurries to where he’s hovering over the stove. Caduceus gropes around at the bottom of the pot as Fjord gathers his hair back so that it doesn’t singe or get dipped in soup. He’s meticulous about it, scooping every coarse tangle away from the surface like it’s something precious.

Caduceus retrieves the ladle easily, laying it on a terrycloth rag and turning to fill a pail with water.

“Thanks,” he rumbles, washing the rest of the abandoned crockery while he’s at the sink. It’s simple to do, and he doesn’t want to leave a mess for Vidalla to clean up just because some of the others wanted a lunch of omelettes. It wouldn’t be fair.

“Sure thing,” says Fjord, plainly waiting for him to finish before he asks his question. It’s a kind gesture, if unnecessary, but Caduceus is pleased to see a burgeoning penchant for patience in his dear friend. He doesn’t want to criticise past actions, which are of course unchangeable, but he rather delights in Fjord showing serious consideration for his own safety nowadays. It’s the nearest he comes to swearing in relief.

“Can I help you with anything?” he asks, picking up the clean ladle and a spoonful of soup. “Don’t answer that yet. Here – taste this for me.”

Fjord complies, absently licking his tusks as he judges the flavour. It’s with real sincerity that he then proclaims, “I’d eat a ton of whatever you make us, Deuces. This is great.”

He’s certain that his gaping grin is making him look a bit air-headed, but he doesn’t much care, standing just a little taller. Fjord smiles back in response, elbowing him lightly just above his hip and going off on a tangent about the ungodly amount of fungus he’s consumed in the past eight months. Caduceus is about to offer a jocular referral to his brimming garden, but he spots something raised and pale green beneath the fabric of Fjord’s shirt, winding malignantly up his breastbone to the hollow of his throat.

He takes Fjord’s shoulders without thinking, turning him so that he’s facing him fully. He indicates the front of his shirt and enquires, “May I?” as gently as possible. Fjord appears flummoxed, but nods him on anyway. Caduceus unlaces the shirt to his ribs, where the serpentine scar fades into his abdomen. It’s keloid, rough to the touch, even though Fjord’s skin is warm and undulates under his cool fingers.

“Sorry,” he mutters, tracing the scar with rising unease. “Jester and I – we thought we’d healed you fully. The wounds were still closing when we took you below decks, I just assumed –,”

“It’s not your fault,” Fjord says quickly, patting his arm. “I think this might have been my old patron, you know, he’s sort of – well, possessive, for one thing. I sort of thought… maybe this was his way of marking me.”

Caduceus frowns at him. “Well, the Wildmother and I have something to say about that.” He rolls up his sleeves, and Fjord quails slightly.

“You do?” he asks, his voice pitched higher than normal. Caduceus directs him into a chair, and tells him to breathe deeply and think of their goddess. She is always with them, but Caduceus whispers his own prayers beseeching Her aid, juvenile poems that his parents had taught him to sing whenever he was scared. He’d hummed a lot of them in the White Dawn Lagoon, traversing an oasis marred by his petrified family. He had saved them then, and he can save his new family too. The Wildmother protects and listens to Her children.

“That’s pretty,” says Fjord nervously, as the words tumble out of him. _Lo, I will serve ye, as the soil will serve the seed; the beasts will roam the fields, yet I will not roam; my hearth is thy womb._ “What does that mean?” _Warm me, warm me, warm me._

“It’s something my mother used to sing to me and my siblings,” he says, taking Fjord’s upper arm in one hand, and laying the other on his solar plexus. “Platitudes, really, but they made us feel better. More connected to our goddess.”

“Must be nice,” says Fjord. “Knowing Her for so long. I guess you don’t have to question much, huh?”

Caduceus exerts pressure, just enough to make Fjord shiver, and his sagacious reply dies on his tongue. He is kneeling in front of him like he is at worship, like this wayward young man is some organic shrine to the deity that has seen him through agonising solitude, unavoidable loss, and the germination of a new community. Yet he doesn’t see the Wildmother first – no, he sees his friend, and a rampaging fear that he needs to alleviate before his own. He has never wanted to protect anything so much in his life.

“Not quite,” he intones softly.

_Warm me._

Caduceus invokes the Wildmother’s divine power with a single utterance, and redirects it into Fjord in the form of deep green magic, glimmering light that coalesces into lichen and grows, rapidly, up his body. It covers the scar completely, a scaly appendage that he prods curiously.

“What’ll this do?”

“Leave it for a few minutes,” he tells him, pulling him to his feet. “It will reduce the scarring, and soothe any pain the wound may still give you. I am… sorry, that it took me this long to heal you properly.”

Fjord scoffs, batting at him. “Forget it, Deucey, seriously. I’m just happy to still be here after that catastrophe. The sooner that orb’s in a crater of lava the better, for all of us.”

Caduceus squeezes his shoulder, a thousand stuffy mantras from his religion clashing with what he really wants to say: a million variations on a declaration of absolute loyalty. None of it sounds right. He’s supposed to be a mentor to a new acolyte, and yet when he dwells on devotion, on adoration, his thoughts swerve from his goddess and towards someone else. Someone flawed, and demonstrably mortal.

He is verging on heresy. He is straying from the Mother – _their_ Mother, now.

Fjord is peering at him uncertainly, so he swallows and says, with immense gravitas, “Soup’s ready.”

Fjord laughs and commends him for his keen culinary aptitude, which makes Caduceus shrivel a bit on the inside, as though changing the subject hadn’t been his doing. Fjord claps him on the back and turns to yell for the others, giving him the opportunity to drift back to his work station, the hot stove and speckled draining board and the remnants of once-mouldy ingredients: roots, tubers, and fungi that he’s poured and chopped and grated into this meal, this offering. He adjusts his movements back into that of a cook, and orders his mind back to that of a servant, a friend, a giver. He can worship later, when he remembers how to fill himself with the goddess, and Her alone.

Fjord herds the party into the dining room, where they bicker and chatter like monkeys. Beau and Jester aid him in transporting the food from one room to the next, depositing platters on the main table and passing them around with warnings to their relative heat and precipitous arrangement. Caduceus hands out bowls of soup while the party digs into maize cakes, bread rolls, spinach stew, egg salad, an array of jams and vegetable pastes, and a dish teeming with fruit. Caleb and Frumpkin fuss, as usual, but after some cajoling from Jester and a bit of light bullying from Beau, he eats enough to put meat on his bones. Caduceus slurps up mushroom soup and feels useful. 

“This is amazing,” Fjord congratulates him, his bowl already clean, and pats his knee under the table. Caduceus gets his thanks out eventually, awkward and terribly scrambled, and tries to focus on something more neutral. He looks to his friends.

There is a din of conversation, mostly centred on Traveller Con. Only a shrewd spectator would notice the tension strung amongst the banter, and Caduceus prides himself on being the canary in the mine – or the Nein, as it were. He watches Veth press into Caleb’s side and stare into the distance, shooting off a joke every now and then. He sees Beau with her arm across the back of Jester’s chair, her eyes flicking to Yasha every few minutes. Yasha, meanwhile, concentrates on her plate, and emerges from her meal only when called upon. Caleb strokes his cat and talks at length about his plans to destroy Fjord’s orb, answering each of Jester’s most banal questions while the others generally go unnoticed. Jester herself includes everyone in her animated prattle about the upcoming trip, but beams down the table at Fjord whenever she pauses to take a breath. Fjord, beside him, covers his chest like there’s still something in there that doesn’t belong.

Caduceus contemplates all of this, through the washing up, and the armouring, and the return of Vidalla. He contemplates this as they walk back through Rosohna, and as Caleb ignites the teleportation circle.

“We ready for this?” Fjord asks, as members of the party shy from gazes or lock hands or smile, hesitantly, across glowing chalk.

Caduceus smiles back. “Yes,” he replies. His lichen will have crumbled from Fjord’s skin by now, but he can still sense him, the way he senses the might of the Wildmother. They are like branches of the same tree, their destinies inextricable from one another.

“Here we go!” screams Jester, as whoops and yelps follow her into the dark, preceding him into the unknown. Fjord goes second to last, and Caduceus ensures he sees him through, the head of their anomalous, interwoven, beloved family.

**Author's Note:**

> comments are love!


End file.
